Table of Contents

I. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative DCMI is committed to maintaining open documentation of its activities, processes, and products by publication on the DCMI Website. The general policy of DCMI is to make publicly available documentation of activities and deliverables except where privacy considerations intervene.

II. TYPOLOGY OF DCMI RESOURCES

DCMI Resources include a broad array of information resources that fall into seven categories.

DCMI Recommendations are semantic or technical specifications that have been approved through DCMI's formal approval process. These specifications are stable and are supported for adoption by the Dublin Core community.

DCMI Proposed Recommendations are technical specifications that are in the process of being approved through DCMI's formal approval process. These specifications are close to stable and enjoy growing support for adoption by the Dublin Core community.

Working Drafts are documents under development. After completion, Working Drafts are submitted to the DCMI Managing Director for approval through DCMI's formal approval process. Publication as a DCMI Working draft does not imply endorsement of any kind by DCMI.

DCMI Recommended Resources are resources under the responsibility of the DCMI Directorate that are recommended as material for use by the DCMI community in support of their use of Dublin Core metadata.

III. PERSISTENCE POLICY

DCMI recognizes that people and applications depend on the persistence of formal documents and machine-readable schemas made available on the DCMI Website and through the DCMI metadata registry. The Dublin Core Metadata pledges that as far as they are able, formal documents as defined in this policy document will continue to be available throughout the life of the DCMI. Where a persistent resource is modified, a change history will be archived.

In the event that DCMI is disbanded, then any organization will be granted the right to make a copy of all public persistent DCMI resources, so long as (1) they are not modified, (2) are preserved in their entirety and (3) are made available to others free of charge. The namespace URIs (under http://purl.org/dc/) will be offered for hosting by another organization.

IV. COPYRIGHT AND DISCLAIMERS

Major considerations for having a Copyright and Disclaimer Policy are:

Protecting the intellectual property rights of all DCMI resources in order to be able to provide access in accordance with the DCMI Publication Policy